XXII
I assume, Tacitus, you are relying principally on my memories to enable you to catch something of the mood in the city during the weeks of Otho's ascendancy when, at his command, I was lodged in the palace. You were, of course, still a boy yourself – fourteen or fifteen if I calculate rightly; and, as I recall you once telling me, your mother had prudently removed herself and all the household, including you and your sisters – what by the way became of the most beautiful of them, Cornelia, with whom I once engaged in a charming flirtation in your father- in-law Agricola's Sabine villa? Now I have lost myself in this sentence. Where was I? (You see how rusty my command of the written language is; it runs with my thoughts in no ordered rhetoric. I apologise; no doubt you will, sternly, despise my incapacity and apology alike.) Ah yes, your mother had removed you to the safety of her father's estates in Campania. I believe you have always resented this – as, if I may say so, so much else. Indeed your resentment was formerly so great that I have heard you speak as if you had indeed been in the city that spring and summer, and a witness of all the horrors then enacted. But I knew otherwise, though I kept silent then.
So I shall now give you what will be of certain use in your great work, and something which you could not have without my assistance. For you can learn of actions from records, and you can dissect character from what you read, from letters and speeches which were recorded, as well as from public documents. But for that shifting and evanescent thing we call mood or atmosphere, you require the testimony of one who lived at the time and saw and felt all. Furthermore, I can supply you also with the gossip and wild stories that did the rounds; and these will lend animation to your History. Some of them were, as you may imagine, choicely absurd.
For instance, prodigies were daily reported. It was said that in the porch of the Capitol, the reins of the chariot on which the Goddess of Victory rides eternally to battle, dropped from her hands, a gloomy omen; that the statue of the Divine Julius, on the Tiber island, turned from the west to face to the east, and this – it was added with many shakes of the head – on a day when there was no breath of wind, as though it would have required a gale to shift the statue east-facing. Someone else had seen a form bigger than any man burst forth from the Temple of Juno bearing a mighty sword. Others reported that an ox in Etruria had spoken, in hexameters moreover, and that a goat had given birth to a calf (predominantly white, with black patches). In short rumour ran on winged feet, and no story was too absurd to find creditors. Domitian, who had been given a post of some sort in the palace, was torn, when we conversed, between credulity and disdain. His intellect told him such tales were nonsense; his fears denied the reasoning of his mind.
A sudden thaw melted snow in the mountains and, being succeeded by three days of incessant rain which led fools to assert that the heavens wept for Rome, caused the Tiber to break its banks and flood. Not only the low- lying and flat districts of the city were under the turbulent waters, even parts long thought safe from flooding found the water lapping at their doors. I required a boat to visit my mother and bring her supplies, which however were scarce. Scores of people were drowned, many more were maroooned in shops, their workplaces or their homes. The foundations of countless slum dwellings were sapped by the force of the waters and gave way when the river returned to its usual channel. It was impossible for the troops to parade in the Campus Martius; they would have had to swim.
The capital was astir, and the ravages of the flood only mirrored the disorder in men's minds. It was said that Vitellius had infiltrated soldiers into the city, in civilian disguise, who were ready, at a given signal, to assassinate the partisans of Otho. So suspicion lurked behind every sentence spoken, and men dared not look each other in the eye. The state of public affairs was even worse. Nobody knew what the future held and opinions shifted with every rumour relayed. When the Senate was in session, many Senators absented themselves on grounds of ill- health. Those who did attend flattered the Emperor who, accustomed from his days as Nero's favourite to such language, treated it with the contempt it merited. But the next minute the flatterers, realising that their words might be held against them, should Otho lose the war that could be only a few weeks distant, tried to give them a double meaning; and so, in most cases, rendered them senseless. When they were called upon to brand Vitellius a traitor and public enemy, the more cautious did so in such general and indeed hackneyed language that none could think them sincere, for their words appeared as a parody of the genuine accusations of treason of which our history already afforded so many shameful examples. Others employed a more cunning ruse. They arranged that, when they rose to speak, their friends and cousins should raise such a hubbub of noise as to make them quite inaudible. So they could subsequently claim that they had done their duty, whoever enquired of them; and they could not be gainsaid.
Otho still hesitated. He received the report of my embassy to Vespasian and Mucianus with equanimity rather then pleasure. He commended my speed and my honesty, then, as if thinking aloud, said, 'All war is ruinous; civil war most ruinous of all.' He recollected my presence, smiled, and said, 'You may find these strange thoughts of an Emperor committed to the defence of his cause, who has just received, thanks to you, the welcome news of the goodwill that the commanders of the Eastern armies feel for me. Yet I would still wish to avoid war, and I wonder whether this assurance can be employed to that purpose. For surely, if Vitellius learns that I have joined Vespasian and Mucianus with me in defence of the Republic – as for convenience we may still call it – then perhaps he will desist and be ready to negotiate terms. Vitellius is no man of war. He's a lazy fellow, timid too, and I can't believe he has stomach for the fight.'
'That's as may be, sir,' I replied, 'but you yourself, when you gave me my commission, said that there were those behind Vitellius – Valens and Caecina you named – who were determined on war. You suggested Vitellius was their puppet, and I have never heard that the feelings or fears of a puppet count for anything.'
'Alas,' he said, 'you do well to remind me of my own words. Yet your readiness to do so makes me sad – so young and already so hard. I hope to avoid war because any war will be my responsibility, a weight on my soul and a blot on my reputation. Consider…' he paused and, without summoning a slave, poured wine for us both. 'I should never,' he said, 'have consented to assume this burden of Empire. And yet what else could I have done? You may say that I might have remained Governor of Lusitania, loyal to Galba. Would you say that?' 'It is none of my business, sir.'
'There were powerful reasons against such a course. My debts for a start. You're a young man, you can't know the demoralising weight of debt. When I was your age, I borrowed without thought of the morrow, or repayment. I had almost as many bankers as mistresses, and they were equally lavish with their favours, I assure you. They seemed to think it an honour to lend me money – as Nero's friend, you know. Then, when Nero turned against me, or I against him -it's a long and complicated story, for we wronged each other, I see that now – and I fell from favour but was bought off as it were with Lusitania, I felt the first chills of bankers' suspicions. So to repay the respectable bankers – just enough to keep them quiet -I resorted to the less reputable moneylenders, whose rates of interest were extortionate. They expected me to repay them by fleecing the poor provincials, my already sufficiently wretched Lusitanians. But I couldn't do so. Couldn't. Do you understand that? Shall I tell you something strange that I have learned? The men who behave well at certain points in their life anyway are not always those who have had a high opinion of themselves and their own virtue.'
He stopped his pacing, lay down on a couch, gazing up at the ceiling where a disagreeably muscle-bound Apollo tangled with an auburn-haired Daphne even as she was being transformed into a bay tree. The vulgar exuberance of the painting suggests to me now, in memory, that it was a Corinthian work. The artists of that city have always had a weakness for the florid and an impure taste. I confess I've always rather liked such work.
'So,' the Emperor continued, talking to keep me with him and save himself from solitude, 'my debts grew, vaster than empires and a good deal quicker, like monstrous vegetables, marrows or pumpkins. When I followed Galba to Rome – at his request, after I had declared my support for him – I was positively besieged by clouds of mosquitos whom I identified without difficulty as creditors. What was I to do? They threatened to strip me of all I possessed, make me bankrupt, disgraced and debarred from public life. Which I was weary of, I assure you. I could have borne exclusion and disgrace, but for one thing: my pride would not let me display to the world the miserable condition to which my extravagance had reduced me…
'Are you still listening? It's good of you to listen. What am I saying? I've forgotten for a happy moment that I am the Emperor. You can't walk out on me, or go to sleep, as you would if I was a private citizen. Still, you're a good boy to listen. Come and sit beside me.' He ruffled my hair, stroked my cheek, and sighed.
'Poppaea was the only person I ever truly loved, except that, when I was with her, I could also love myself. No more; Otho's despicable, a sad piece of work. Relax, boy, I have no designs on you. I had designs on Galba. He
